There haven’t been many posts the last few days, but it’s not because we haven’t been cooking.  It’s because we’ve been cooking a lot for friends visiting from Seattle – and I’d rather cook and talk with friends around the table for hours than get up and make a blog post.

Selfish, I know, but… it’s all about me, right?!?

The pizza dough is pretty much the recipe I used to make when I worked at Pirro’s 40+ years ago, except I use olive oil.   It’s hard to believe I was hand-spinning pizza back in 1968.  Time certainly flies when you’re having fun.

Pizza Dough

  • 1 1/2 cups warm water (100º to 105º)
  • 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
  • 4 cups “00” flour or unbleached all-purpose flour plus more for dusting
  • 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
  • olive oil for bowl

Sprinkle yeast over warm water in bowl of mixer fitted with dough hook. Let proof about 5 minutes.

Mix together flour and salt. Add to yeast mixture. Mix on low speed about 4 minutes or until dough forms a coarse ball. Stop mixer and cover bowl with a towel. Let dough rest about 5 minutes, then remove towel and continue mixing another 2 minutes or so.

Lightly oil a large bowl. Form dough into a ball, transfer to bowl and turn to lightly coat with oil. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes, then refrigerate overnight.

Punch down dough, re-roll, and return to bowl. Tightly cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or up to 24 hours.

Divide dough into 2 pieces; shape pieces into balls and place on a lightly floured work surface. Loosely cover with a damp kitchen towel and let rise at warm room temperature until doubled, about 2 hours.

I actually made two pizzas.  One with pepperoni, above, and another with sundried tomato pesto that Victor made a while back, and assorted veggies; green and yellow zucchini, red bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms…  and both of them were made with fresh buffalo mozzarella and some pecorino romano sprinkled on top.

Homemade pizza and good friends.

It doesn’t get much better.